GEGL Dev Seeks Crowd-funding Model For GIMP Components

GIMP developer Nicolas Robidoux seeks to leverage a freedom-based crowd-funding solution to bank-roll completion of the Nohalo/Lohalo/Lojaggy/Loblur suite of image resamplers for GEGL. The idea started back on Nov. 11th in the GIMP mailing list. Robidoux answers whether or not he plans to create a project on Kickstarter or not.

Prospective GIMP “patron”:

I would love to finish the Nohalo/Lohalo/Lojaggy/Loblur suite of image resamplers for GEGL, but I simply can’t afford to do significant pro bono work these days. (Lohalo, which in my mind would become Nohalo, is already “in”, and for better or worse replaces Lanczos when using the GEGLized GIMP. Loblur would be the Lanczos “equivalent” that works for arbitrary warps.)

I’m not expecting tons of money, just enough so I don’t get poorer while I do the job.

The answer is a noble one, claiming that he doesn’t require “tons of money”, but does call his work until now “pro-bono”, which also seems to be a fair description. Though his response says nothing of his plans to produce income for the effort, the realization of his need has now come in the form of a call to arms on FreedomSponsors.org, a Kickstarter-like boot-strapper for free software projects.

Interested?

If you are interested in helping Nicolas Robidoux with development of faster image resizing and resampling for GEGL, but want to learn more about the progress made so far, watch this talk from the Libre Graphics Meeting 2011 in Montreal.

If you are interested in contributing monetarily towards completion of this GEGL goodness, you will want to donate here. Only $60 has been given so far, so hopefully you will be able to open your hearts and wallets to Nicolas so that we can keep GIMP relevant.

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About Dean Howell

Aside from being a huge Sega fan, Dean is an LPIC certified Linux professional with over a decade experience. In addition to spending his free time burning through the classics from Sega and evangelizing open source, he's also the editor-in-cheif of The Powerbase.
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pfff, if he doesn’t open a funding project in well known website, no one need to be astonished that no one give money !
go for kickstarter my friend or the other one that I don’t remember the name …

Beluga

I’m not sure Kickstarter would allow this kind of funding. Indiegogo is more laissez-faire, but Freedomsponsors is tailor-made for mini-projects or single software issues like this. It’s actually not so much about being on a well-known website: if your project doesn’t get visibility or is otherwise unattractive, it WILL fail no matter how sexy the funding platform. I once tried helping an ecological-themed project get visibility first as an Indiegogo project and then on Kickstarter, but it failed on both. Payment methods are one area, which actually might make a difference, but Freedomsponsors uses Paypal and is even working on Bitcoin payments. Indiegogo has Paypal only for non-profits.

Alexandre Prokoudine

Dear Dean,

I’m afraid, the title of your post is highly misleading. GIMP isn’t seeking a crowdfunding model.

This is a personal initiative of one of GEGL developers. Before we officially endorse the project, we’d rather make sure Nicolas is definite about the time to complete the project, as well as the money he needs for that.

Don’t hesitate to contact us for comments whenever you feel the urge to post on GIMP again

Truly yours,
GIMP PR dept.

http://profiles.google.com/deanhowell2 Dean Howell

Alexandre, my apologies. Thanks very much for the invitation to make contact.

Alexandre Prokoudine

No probs, thanks for the swift reply

Nicolas Robidoux

Indeed, my description was rather terse, and I could have been more specific RE: that this is not a “Wilber-approved initiative”, at least not yet.
Just know that if at this point, you are not funding Wilber, you are funding me, myself and eye to do something for Wilber which I care about. There is a big difference.
Hold on to your Paypal accounts!

Nicolas Robidoux

This being said:
Thank you Dean.

http://profiles.google.com/deanhowell2 Dean Howell

Thanks for dropping by Nicolas. GIMP is my favorite piece of software, ever. Even when I’ve become frustrated with it, I’ve never spoken ill of it.

Nicolas Robidoux

Maybe you could change the title to the more accurate “Geek Seeks Crowd-funding Model For GEGL Components”?

Nicolas Robidoux

Excellent revised title!

vonskippy

Why don’t they get a real name that describes their product instead of offending a bunch of people and maybe people with money will take them seriously.

Until then, MEH !

http://www.digifail.com/ Tom Nardi

You mean like “GNU Image Manipulation Program”?

vonskippy

Except no one except the freaks and geeks crowd knows that.

I’m sure I could come up with all types of “clever” tech sounding acronyms for F**K or B**CH but that still doesn’t make them good names.

If GIMP wants to have mainstream acceptance, it needs to loose the junior high school naming convention.